The historical and evolutionary stages of the strudel

The origin of the strudel is neither Tyrolese nor German, but Turkish. In all probability the strudel is a variation of an ancient cake, still nowadays very common in Turkey, called Baclava, which has preserved its original recipe in the course of the centuries: it�s a mixture of nuts, dried fruit and bread softened in a rather strong liqueur, rolled up in thin pastry and baked. Anyway, when did this product of the Turkish cuisine enter the cookery Mitteleuropean tradition? During the centuries the points of contact between the two civilizations were certainly numerous and definitely not friendly, but without doubt their closest encounter took place in XVI century, in 1526, when the Sultan S�layman the Legislator, called Suleiman in the Occident, defeated the Hungarians in the battle of Mohacs (when Louis II of  Hungary also died), by preparing the annextion of large part of Hungary and even arriving at besieging Vienna in 1529. That was a hard time for the European Powers, seriously threatened more by an army than by a culture which was often very difficult to get along with.

On that occasion the salvation of Europe depended not on the superiority of its military force but on the difficulties of the winter movements in the Balkans, which forced the Turks to attack only in spring and summer. In October, with the first snowfalls, the Ottoman armies were forced to go back to their bases leaving the enemy the possibility of reorganizing and counterattacking the following year. However several attempts to conquer Vienna were repeated, in 1532 and then again in 1533, but the arrival of the winter forced S�layman to retreat. The situation persuaded him to draw up a treaty with the Emperor Ferdinand in 1547, according to which he gave a third of Hungary to Austria in exchange for a heavy yearly tribute. The Turkish advance in Middle Europe continued for about 150 years, in particular at expense of Russia, which ceded Ukraine, Bielorussia, Crimea and all the shores of the Black Sea, which became a Turkish lake. The recovery of the Central Powers would only arrive at the end of XVII century, in particular thanks to Russia and another failure of the siege of Vienna in 1683. In 1699 the treaty of Karlovitz was signed, the first unfavourable to Turkey, according to which the sultanate lost forever a large part of Hungary, Transilvania, Crimea and Ukraine. After that started a slow but continuous retreat from Europe, while the czarist Russia and the Habsburg Empire started to become more and more powerful.

During 200 years of Turkish domination Hungary assimilated, apart from the Muslim religion, many other aspects of the Turkish culture and of course its food habits adjusted to those of the winners. This historical fact caused the birth of new cookery traditions in Hungary and the strudel is perhaps their most relevant and well-known result. Certainly every culture is never completely replaced or swept away by another, therefore in the evolution of the Baclava into strudel there was a new ingredient, the apples, which were an integrating part of the Magyar nourishment as large growings of this fruit testify, while they were almost completely absent in Turkey. The addition of this ingredient was probably due to the necessity of increasing the volume of the mixture and as a result its yield and use. When Austria conquered Hungary in 1699, it was the first time the strudel had been in Europe. Nowadays Austria is thought to be the most important producer of this cake. The Viennese strudel is very popular and is served with a cup of hot milk or coffee in all the caf�s.

 The alpine valleys in the North- East of Italy have also become traditional producers of the strudel, introducing it into their cuisine together with other typical Tyrolian ingredients such as speck, knodel and rye-bread. The large production of apples especially in Trentino has certainly helped the popularity of the strudel and many other desserts which employ baked or fried apples. Nowadays there are many variations of the classic apple strudel as for the filling and its different types of pastry. Apples, saut�es pine-seeds, raisins, softened in grappa or rhum, sugar, cinnamon as one of the most important spices and sometimes a few nuts make a soft mixture, heir of the more ancient Turkish Baclava.

Even the external pastry goes from the simple short pastry to the puff pastry, but there�s also a pastry called �strudel pastry�, which has an intermediate consistence between the previous ones. Last but not less important, the thread pastry, with its simple ingredients, but hard to knead and roll out. With a particular technique of the hands it can be rolled out like a veil, which is then rolled up around a rather dry filling of bread-crumbs.

For the pastry: about 300 gr. flour, 50 gr. butter, 1 egg, 25 gr. sugar, a little bit of milk, salt. For the filling: 5 renetts, 50 gr. butter, 50 almonds, 2 spoonfuls of raisins, 50 gr. pine-seeds, 1 lemon, � small glass of grappa or brandy.
1) Make the pastry with flour, salt, sugar, one egg, softened butter and milk. Knead the dough as long as it gets elastic. Let it stand for about 20 minutes. Cut the apples into cubes and put them with the other ingredients (macerate the raisins in water first). Macerate the filling for about half an hour. Roll out the pastry with a rolling-pin, then put it on a drier (in this way it�s easier to roll it up).
2) Put the filling in the middle leaving an external margin of 4 cm.and roll up the pastry as to have a regular loaf.	3) Fix its ends and fold the pastry again.
4) Paint the surface with a whipped yolk and spatter it with caster sugar and ground poppy.
5) Bake it at 190 � for 45 minutes. Let it get colder and serve it fragrant, alone or with some sauce.